Cons:

The key to understanding a Total War game is realizing that it's not really one game, but two. There's a traditional real-time strategy component in which players marshal their armies and proceed to maneuver, charge, shoot and stab one another until one side either retreats or surrenders. Then there's the overarching "metagame," a classic turn-based 4X empire builder in which players conquer provinces in an attempt to place their iron boot heel across the face of the world. What makes these games work is not only how well each side works as an individual unit (either might have been released on its own and been a quality product), but how well the two sides are married to one another. This, in a nutshell, is what makes Empire a brilliant game, easily the best of the Total War series to date.

The secret to Empire's success is the way that the developers slimmed down the interface, shifting much of the data required by the player to more sensible locations. Instead of doing all economic development from a province's cities, each map region now has economic hot spots that can be constructed and developed separately. One province, for example, may have spaces that can be developed into an iron mine or a college or a tea plantation or one of several different kinds of ports. Each of these areas can also be used to draft military units, as can a player's generals. This makes the city interface itself simpler by only allowing up to five different development slots that will determine things like population happiness, economic output, and the types of military units that can be recruited there. Merchants and diplomats, on the other hand, are no longer seen on the map, and both functions are handled via an information screen.

The implications of these seemingly simple changes are pretty profound. Moving economic structures out of the city now makes maneuvering and army influence on the grand campaign map much more important. Since armies can raid and destroy these structures, it forces players to get their armies out into the field more often. This in turn means fewer siege missions (something previous Total War games had a glut of) and more interesting tactical situations to deal with in the RTS portion of the game. While merchants are gone, the trade routes established by the player now appear as lines on the map with wagon trains of trade vessels sailing along them. Interdicting these routes and stealing an enemy's money is as simple as parking a unit on them and ordering them to go pirate. The result is a campaign map that feels much more alive and dynamic than in any previous iteration.

More importantly, the new map gameplay actually deepens the strategic depth while making an empire much, much easier to control. In just one example, one of my first games as the Maratha Confederacy (Indian Hindus who staged an uprising against the Muslim Mughals) was nearly derailed when I spent the first portion of the game focusing on the land game and battling against the Mughal. Europe, particularly Great Britain, was merely a source of funds that came from my fantastically profitable tea plantations. I only needed enough ships to fend off Mughal raiders and Barbary Pirates and keep my sea lanes clear. Then I tried to kick the Portuguese out of the biggest, most lucrative port in India.

Suddenly everything changed. Portugal, while only a minor computer-controlled nation in Empire, was allied to Great Britain... most definitely not a minor nation. Suddenly I not only lost my best trading partner, I had every ship in the British Navy strangling off my trade routes. Empire's campaign map gameplay does an amazing job at simulating the empire-building, intricate webwork of trade partners, diplomacy and alliances and the jockeying for power that make the 18th century an inexhaustible treasure trove for armchair monarchs. The addition of naval gameplay connects three different action theaters (Europe, India and North America) with four naval action-only trade zones and makes what might seem like a sprawling game world feel small and intimate. Since the game's 22 nations each have their victory conditions balanced out for their historical starting position, it also makes every game a very different experience.